to question the wisdom or justice of any of the acts of the state,
which is arriving at state absolutism by another process. Besides,
this would theoretically exclude all human or natural activity, all
human intelligence and free-will from the state, which were to fall
into either pantheism or atheism.

VIII. The right of government to govern, or political authority, is
derived by the collective people or society, from God through the law
of nature. Rulers hold from God through the people or nation, and the
people or nation hold from God through the natural law. How nations
are founded or constituted, or a particular people becomes a sovereign
political people, invested with the rights of society, will be
considered in following chapters. Here it suffices to say that
supposing a political people or nation, the sovereignty vests in the
community, not supernaturally, or by an external supernatural
appointment, as the clergy hold their authority, but by the natural
law, or law by which God governs the whole moral creation.

They who assert the origin of government in nature are right, so far as
they derive it from God through the law of nature, and are wrong only
when they understand by the law of nature the physical force or forces
of nature, which are not laws in the primary and proper sense of the
term. The law of nature is not the order or rule of the divine action
in nature which is rightfully called providence, but is, as has been
said, law in its proper and primary sense, ordained by the Author of
nature, as its sovereign and supreme Lawgiver, and binds all of his
creatures who are endowed with reason and free-will, and is called
natural, because promulgated through the reason common to all men.
Undoubtedly, it was in the first instance, to the first man,
supernaturally promulgated, as it is republished and confirmed by
Christianity, as an integral part of the Christian code itself. Man
needs even yet instruction in relation to matters lying within the
range of natural reason, or else secular schools, colleges, and
universities would be superfluous, and manifestly the instructor of the
first man could have been only the Creator himself.

The knowledge of the natural law has been transmitted from Adam to us
through two channels--reason, which is in every man, and in immediate
relation with the Creator, and the traditions of the primitive
instruction embodied in language and what the Romans call jus gentium,